


Without Mythologies

by electricchicken



Category: Zombies Run!
Genre: M/M, Missing Scene, season two spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-26
Updated: 2013-07-26
Packaged: 2017-12-21 11:05:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/899556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/electricchicken/pseuds/electricchicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>fort·night  (fôrtnt) n.<br/>A period of 14 days; two weeks.</p><p>[Spoilers through the three first side missions of Zombies, Run! Season 2]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Without Mythologies

**1**.

W.G. snaps with a crack like breaking bone. Jack tries to bat the sweat from his eyes with the bit of the inside of his forearm that seems the least spattered in brown goo, and lets the cricket bat's handle slip from cramped and arching fingers.

The nearest zoms stumble forward, tripping over the bodies of however many he's managed to down, but never slowing, stopping. Not ever that.

He takes another step back, sock feet soundless even on dried leaves, and feels bark scrape at his skin. Backed up flush against the tree now. Nowhere else to move. Not with the way the dead have fanned out around him, crowding in on all sides, too eager for meat to form a nice, orderly, British queue. 

Jack blinks his eyes shut for the span of a single, calming breath that does nothing.  

He hopes El and Andrew got away alright. That'd be something. At least someone would be able to tell Gene — 

God, he should have said something. Some kind of message. 

Goodbye, at the very least.

The zoms are crowding in. This close, there's no way for the smell of them to get any worse, so Jack's got nothing to blame but his own lungs when it gets harder and harder to breathe.

When the shotgun blasts, sending the closest of the shamblers reeling sideways, he almost chokes on his first pull of air.

 

**2.**

For a day, he doesn't know anything is wrong. 

No, that's not right. Can't be when everything, every single thing that could possibly be, is wrong. 

Abel's a mess. New Canton's taken in half the township, and no one can account for the other half. Runner Four comes back silent and tear streaked and doesn't respond when Major De Santa asks for a mission report. Seven appears, then disappears like he was never back at all. No one's heard from Three. And so forth and so on all the way down the roster, numbers one through twenty one, minus a few. Sam shows up at the med tent, and Maxine tosses Eugene a roll of bandages and together they wrap his sprained-but-probably-not-broken wrist and don't make small talk.

He's too busy worrying to worry.

They're roughly thirty eight hours post-attack when runners Twelve and Sixteen radio in from New Canton and the bottom goes out of everything. 

 

**3.**

Powell's nice enough — saved his life, for one thing, gets a lot of points there. But once Jack's been given some antiseptic and a cup of water and what might be a boiled potato he's firm on his quarantine measures. Into the root cellar for 24 hours, and if he's not grey they'll talk tomorrow. 

He'd fight about it, but it's been a while since his last near death experience. This one's taken a bit out of him, every way but literally he hopes. Jack wipes off the spatter and strips off his ruined socks and falls asleep in the cool dark about three seconds after that.

Hours later, he comes back to consciousness just long enough to determine that yes, the lumpy thing is a potato. It is delicious. He sleeps again.

When he wakes next, there's someone watching.

"Gene?"

"Hello?" The voice is female. Youngish. Posh. Jack sits up to stretch the kinks out of his neck and back and tries not to shiver as the memories come flooding back through his sleep-addled brain.

"Can I come up now?" There's a patch of light on his right. The doorway. He remembers a doorway. Whoever's standing there is backlit, but they've got a curvy outline and long hair. Probably the voice. "I'm not grey.  Haven't even got a throat tickle."

"Come up slowly," her voice is firm, and a little cold, with a touch of fear under that. "Keep your hands at your sides, palms up. And don't try anything."

When he gets to his feet, blooms of light explode behind Jack's eyelids and his knees feel watery. He makes his way to the stairs like he's reenacting the first few scenes of _Bambi_. 

"My name's Jack Holden," he tries to keep his voice steady, friendly, audience-ready. The woman in the doorway steps back, out of view. Giving him room. Jack hopes there's nothing more to it than that. "I'm from Abel Township. I host a radio show, maybe you've heard it. I'm no threat. I just want to go home."

He climbs the stairs in silence, comes blinking and squinting into the light in a kitchen that could probably hold a quarter of Abel comfortably. Powell had taken him in through the outside entrance, given him a chance to see the scale of the manor house he'd been led to. The size is still a shock.

The woman — definitely a woman, he can tell now — is leaning against a counter, watching him with crossed arms. Jack doubts it's coincidence that she's positioned herself next to the knife block. Her hair is dark and her dress is cut conservative and a little old fashioned and the lines around her eyes and mouth look like they're the newly-minted variety.

He hovers in the doorway, not sure where to go next. "Hello," he tries.

"Arabella Ramsay," she doesn't offer him a handshake. He's not surprised. "Welcome to Birkmyre."

The name pings off something in his brain. Familiar, somehow. From some conversation he can't quite remember, some night or another at the rec with Dr. Myers and Sam and the Runners and—

Oh God.

"Do you have a radio setup?" he starts forward, too fast, catches himself and nearly stumbles when Arabella flinches away. "I've got — there's someone — I need to get a message home. Please."

Something flickers in Arabella's expression and he isn't sure what. "You'll have to talk to mother about that."

 

**4.**

Runner Three  doesn't quite prance back through the main gates, but it's pretty close. Eugene grits his teeth and tries not to roll his eyes, and keeps picking his way across the compound, or what's left of it. Head down and inconspicuous. 

Like not wanting to talk's ever, ever worked with Simon. 

"What's the word, Gene?" Three lopes alongside him, like a dog on a leash straining to break free and chase rabbits, even though Eugene knows he's had to go flat out to get back from the pavilion, trying to shake off zombies the whole way. He grins, and it seems like he ought to be panting instead, tongue lolling out.

"Wecome back." It comes out flat, insincere, but it's the best he can do. It's either no emotion or — or the opposite of that. 

"And what a warm welcome it is," Simon says, and Eugene just wants him to choke on all that serenity. "Where's your man got to? I'd have thought he'd be the one rolling out the red carpet."

He's never really been in a fight, not with a living person, but Eugene thinks this is what it would feel like if someone punched him in the gut. 

"You alright there?" Simon's gotten a few steps ahead of him, somehow. Maybe because Eugene's stopped. Frozen, to be accurate about it. 

"Fine," he feels the letters crunch between his teeth on the way out of his mouth. His vision swims and no, goddammit he can't do this. Not out here. Not in front of Simon of all people. 

"Oh Christ," Simon's voice goes soft, and it's the worst thing possible. Except for all the other things right now that are so, so much worse. "What happened? Is  he—"

"He's not back yet," Eugene says, perfectly neutral, and flees.

Small mercies, Three lets him.

 

**5.**

"You're sure you talked to Sam Yao?"

Lady Beatrix is far too mannered to roll her eyes at him, but the look she fixes on Jack makes his stomach try to crawl out his back. "We made your call, Jack. Arabella, pass the peas, please."

With only three of them, the dining room table feels like it must be a quarter mile long. Bella almost has to get up from her chair to pass the chafing dish to the head chair. Jack rather envies Powell, and his seat at the servants' table back in the kitchen. A hot lunch on proper china isn't worth a case of the willies like he's getting.

They eat in silence, punctuated by scraps of cutlery against plates, of chewing, until he can't take it. "But they said they were from Abel, right? Abel Township?"

Lady Beatrix cuts another dainty square from her slice of tinned meat, places it in her mouth and withdraws her fork, tines facing downward, chews, swallows, dabs at her mouth with a napkin and finally speaks. "Yes."

It's only years of lectures on dinner manners from his mum that keep Jack from grabbing the corner of the table cloth and spilling the whole damn dish set on the floor. "And you're sure they said they'd talk to Eugene — Eugene Woods. You asked about Eugene?"

There's nothing loud or even particularly abrupt about the way Lady Beatrix sets down her fork, but when he sees Bella cringe out of the corner of his eye, Jack doesn't blame her. "If you don't feel you can believe me, then I'm afraid we're going to have to remain at an impasse."

She's watching him down the bridge of her nose, watery blue eyes fixed on him unblinking. Jack has to dig in his heels, to keep himself from slinking under the table and staying there. "You're right. Sorry. Sorry, you're right. I just—"

A hand on his wrist, and Bella's squeezing, digging her nails into the underside of his arm even as her eyes are still trained on her mother. 

"Sorry," Jack mumbles again, and looks away.

 

**6.**

Eugene slips the headset back over his ears and pulls the microphone towards him on the desk. "Runner Four, Runner Two, ready?"

Jody's "aye" is the steadiest he's heard from her since the attack. Good. That seems... good. 

"Raise the gates," Amber says. Not that 'raise' is strictly accurate. Through the earphones he hears the scrape of metal on metal as one of the guards pushes back the exit door. A few pops of gunfire, another scrape and they're alone. Just two runners and their operators and the zoms.

Eugene draws in a breath to steady himself and reads from the log. 

"Search and Recovery day six, final mission of three." 

"Due east today, runners," Amber adds, readjusting her map with a crinkle of paper, smoothing out a new section. Eugene looks away, pretends he can't see how many sections they've shaded off, how little blank space there is left to scout. 

"There are some farmhouses," the logsheet tells him. "The Major thinks some of the evacuees might have headed for them after the attack. You'll do a search, then come back."

East.

And North East this morning, and North West before that. Same logical orderly compass round they've done for days. Round and round. Cycle after cycle and still just, just nothing. Not even a sign. Not even one.

"How was it earlier?" David says, blurts, and Eugene thinks he can hear him wince once it's said. "Any joy on the morning runs?"

He looks down at the log, reporter's chicken scratch and Amber's schoolmarm cursive and Janine's block letters bleeding into each other, pencil lead smearing under his fingers. 

ABEL POPULATION CHANGE: 0

"Nothing yet today," Amber says, soft. 

They don't talk much from then on, at least not until the first swarm of zoms hits.

When the mission ends Eugene draws an X through the box on the log reserved for for new intel and findings and leaves the day at that.

 

**7.**

They sit in the back garden. The rain's coming down in a fine mist today, but the gazebo's watertight enough to protect them. Through the thick canopy of vines the zoms hanging at the end of Powell's lures look like strange upside-down flowers, swaying and clawing in the afternoon breeze.

"They aren't coming today, are they?" Jack says, and feels his eyes start to burn.

Bella takes a sip from her cup of tea, so careful to keep the saucer from rattling when she sets it down. "Maybe tomorrow," she says, and pushes the plate of stale biscuits his way.

 

**8.**

"Can't spare the resources," Major De Santa says.

"Not getting the results," Major De Santa says.

"You understand," Major De Santa says, and "priorities," and "the good of the township," and "can't be selfish," and and and.

Eugene nods and breathes and turns in the day's log and bites down the scream building in his chest. 

They pencil him and Amber in for a single search mission mid-afternoon the next day. 

"Get some rest before then," Major De Santa says. "That's an order, Woods."

He tastes blood, but the scream stays where it is.

 

**9.**

"You could come with me," Jack says, kicking at a fence post with the toe of his gumboot. In the pen beyond them, one of the Birkmyre cows regards him with the sort of sweet, pop-eyed expression only a Jersey can make. 

Bella tugs her rain slicker tighter across her chest and looks away, down field. The wind blows her curly hair out across her face in dark streaks, and it doesn't quite hide the way her lips have turned down, the way her eyes scan the grounds between the pasture and house looking for — for what? 

"I'm serious," Jack says. "You'd be welcome at Abel. Janine — I told you about Janine, right — she's always going on about aquifers and water-borne parasites and filtration and all that stuff. You'd get along great. I mean, how many people can say they still get to use their uni degree after the apocalypse?"

"It wouldn't be safe," she tucks her hair away behind her ear, flaps a hand at the trees bordering the estate. "There aren't many paths through Powell's traps. You'd be liable to snare yourself. You wouldn't be any good to anyone that way."

"We'd take Powell. And your mum, too, and the cows even. You could all come. You've got guns and I saw some old, I don't know, croquet mallets I think in the back hall," he can hear his voice going thin again, pleading. "We could make it on our own, the four of us. We wouldn't need to wait here for the runners from Abel. And you could stay with me and Gene, until they found you a tent. Or you could have our tent and we'd have a camp out in the quad. Or, or something. We'd make do, anyway."

"Jack, stop," her eyes are on the move again, darting away from his.

"I just want to go home," he catches her hand in his and the shock of human contact after days and days without makes him want to recoil and wrap himself around her and not let go in equal measure. It's Bella who decides for him, and the force of her hug nearly punches the air from his lungs. "I can't just wait like this any more. I can't. I can't."

She pets the back of his head, and her hair tickles his cheek. She smells like soap and old books and dust and the height's wrong — it's all wrong, of course it's all wrong — but Jack closes his eyes anyway and for a second lets himself pretend it's not. He thinks Eugene would understand. 

"I miss him so much," he tells the fabric of her raincoat where it bunches at her neck, and doesn't complain when she squeezes him harder.

When they get back to the house just in time for tea, Lady Beatrix meets them at the back door carrying a pair of binoculars and wearing a faint, strange smile. 

 

**10.**

ABEL POPULATION CHANGE: 4 sheep

They get the whole of the township out to see the remains of the flock. All twenty or thirty personnel too essential or too damaged to move, crowded around the makeshift pen in front of the farmhouse, watching the ewes bleat and chew and walk two or three paces  at a time. The first return on a search mission all week, of course it's a main event. 

Eugene slides the day's log under Janine's front door and doesn't bother with a debrief. The Major can enjoy her moment bonding with the lower ranks. 

He doesn't have a tent yet. Hard to say if no one's thought to assign him space, or if it's more practical than that. No point in wasting a bed on someone who sleeps sitting up in chairs or in the corner of the med tent, when Maxine's forced him onto a cot while he sorts and folds sheets at two a.m. Either way, it hasn't mattered. 

It's only now, wandering between the rows of gently flapping canvas, that he can start to see the need. 

Out here by the wall it's all dust and silence, no sounds but the scrape of his crutches on dirt and wind through the razor wire and a very faint moaning. Almost peaceful.

Tents give way to what's left of the armoury and he picks a path through rubble and nods without seeing when someone on the wall waves down at him from the new defense tower. The training area's easier -- flat concrete pad all smooth, he's over that in no time, picking up enough speed to pass the hospital in a blur, to cross through the garden without noticing a single plant. 

The quad opens up on his left again, everyone still slapping backs and congratulating each other on a successful operation, then it's back for another loop through the tents and the silences and the flap flap flap of fabric and the dirt underfoot and there's still nowhere to go and nowhere to stop and nothing not anything not—

A loose stone cracks off the bottom of the crutch and he lurches forward a step, gets his weight back under him, goes still. 

Another tendril of wind drifts past, ruffling the nearest tent and chilling the sweat plastering his shirt to the small of his back. Eugene's heart thumps against his ribs, and when he breathes in his lungs feel stretched-out and worn thin.

The next step doesn't seem worth the effort.

There's still nowhere to go.

No reason to get there.

He could stand and wait and stand and watch in the dust and the silence and the moans for — how long? As long as his shoulders hold, as long as the walls hold, as long as the universe holds, right up until its eventual heat death.

Wouldn't matter.

Wouldn't change— 

Wouldn't fix—

And the thing that's been crawling and clawing at the back of his mind, curled against his brain stem, whispers _wouldn't bring him back_.

Eugene remembers why he'd wanted the walk. 

Too late now. His leg won't listen and his arms feel like dead weight and the thing in his head's got its hooks in now, can't be outrun once its drawn blood. 

Four sheep. Four goddamned sheep and a map that's almost full up and no sign good or bad yesterday and no sign tomorrow and no sign the next day and nothing for the rest of his life but wondering and not knowing and faint hope and the feeling in his bones—

Eugene squeezes his eyes shut, shakes his head.

_in his bones in his blood thumping with his pulse in the pit of his stomach hammering in his ears choking off breath_

A noise like a sob. Is a sob. No reason to pretend it's not.

_call it a feeling or intuition or dread a sixth sense, makes no difference, and he can feel it every minute and second getting stronger beating louder like drums_

He sways and the crutch drags on gravel and the zombies moan so pretty where he can't see them.

_in his ears booming through his skull reverberating through the hollow space where everything else used to go all that person he can't fill up screaming in rising crescendo_

His knee hits the ground, not stable enough to take his weight on its own, and he keeps going forward, tastes dirt. 

_he's dead he's dead he knows it dead and gone_ and there's nothing. Nothing left.

 

**11.**

"Maybe if I talked to them," Jack starts, and Bella nearly drops the chafing dish of potatoes she's passing around the table.

Lady Beatrix smears butter onto some sort of oat cracker type thing that she's taken to serving with every meal and gives him a look of indulgent confusion. "I don't see why that would be necessary. I'm sure they haven't forgotten you're here." 

It's probably his imagination, the way it seems like she narrows her eyes at him on 'forgotten.'

"I know, I know, but," except he doesn't know how to argue that. 

She's right, of course she's right. They wouldn't forget. He's pretty sure Gene, at least, must want to see him again at some point. Would write him down on a list somewhere, for the Abel runners to collect once they've got their fill of medicines and sports bras. They're coming for him. Eventually, they must be coming for him. 

They must want him back at some point.

"Maybe I could talk to them about a trade," he suggests. "I know you said you don't want to come back with me, but there must be something you could use here — I  dunno, bandages or more ammunition or a couple new DVDs. And maybe we could borrow Bella for a bit, just to get our water treatment sorted and—"

"This really isn't proper supper conversation," Lady Beatrix says, mild, like she hasn't even been listening. "Bella, I saw you speaking with Powell this afternoon. How is the garden coming along?"

"Five minutes, that's all I'm asking," he tries to keep the whine out of his voice. Lady Beatrix isn't likely to have the same sympathy as her daughter for any carrying on. "I'm sure you must all want me out of your hair. One less mouth to feed, if I'm gone. Getting rid of me's got great benefits."

"Nonsense Jack," another oat-y cracker-y thing, her fingers so delicate on the knife. "We'd be happy to have you the whole of the outbreak, should it come to that."

Jack opens his mouth to protest — no, protest makes it sound good, like there would be more than a jumble of panicked nonsense coming out.

"We're low on fuel," and it's Bella this time, voice a low monotone, eyes trained on her hands clasped in her lap. "I didn't want to tell you, but we're down to our last drum. We can't spare the generator time. I'm sorry, Jack."

"There you are, that's settled," Lady Beatrix says, and pushes the plate of crackers his way. "Now, about that garden..."

 

**12.**

The headset crackles alive just as he's starting to think about giving up for the night. "Message for Abel Township. Abel Township, come in."

"I'm here, Nadia," though he doesn't know how long he'll have alone. Amber's been checking up on him every hour or so. Eugene wonders if she's officially been appointed as his minder, or if it was her displaying her own initiative. Either way, she'll probably yell at him for not eating more than a couple bites of the stew she left last visit. 

"I've got your Runners Twelve and Sixteen with me. The Council's agreed to give you a maximum of ten minutes of radio time," a pause, and her voice relaxes, loses some of its official stiffness. "It was all I could get you."

"That should be fine," he wonders how much she had to fight to get even that. They may be sharing resources for the moment, but it's not like New Canton and Abel ever really buried the hatchet. The rocket attack's taken priority, but no one here is forgetting the last raid. "Hey, thank you for this."

"It's nothing." It's not nothing, and she knows it better than he does probably. He hadn't even expected her to say yes, when he first patched himself in to New Canton to request the call. This, this is beyond anything. "Eugene?"

"Yeah?"

"I hope you find him," her voice goes rough, like she's gritting her teeth, and his own vision blurs. "I'm putting the Runners on now."

He hears a chair creak, some shuffling, and then it's Andrew's deep brogue filling his ears, "'Ey Gene. What's the situation?"

"It's about," he swallows, and the pause is too obvious, but somehow that doesn't seem important the way it used to. "It's about Jack."

"He didn't make it back, did he?" a softer voice, flatter, closer to his own. Sixteen.

"I need you to tell me everything you can remember about the last time you saw him," Eugene says. "Everything. No detail is too small."

They cover most of a log sheet in notes before Nadia comes back on the line to tell them there time's up. 

By the time Amber comes to look in on him again, Eugene's got their map spread over the desk and two quadrants ruled out. 

He can't hope any more. But he has to know.

 

**13.**

Bella moves the rook forward, pieces clicking together sharp in the library quiet. "Check."

"Damn, already?" Jack shakes his head and laughs. "I told you I wasn't any good at this. Gene won't even play with me any more after he beat me the first fifty—" She's frowning again, face gone troubled, and he can't help but do the same. "Sorry, I talk about him too much, don't I?"

"Nothing like that," she smiles at him, thin and forced, and he can see the way she's rolling a captured pawn between her fingers, digging the ridges into her skin.

"No, it's okay," he reaches across the board, taking her hand in his and prying the chess piece away. "We'll talk about something else. You can tell me about frenetic aquifers again."

"Phreatic."

"What I said," he sets the piece in the middle of the board, and offers his hand again, helping her up from her chair. "C'mon, we'll go sit out back, get some air."

"Watch for runners?" She hooks an arm in his, gives him a wink as she settles in against his side. 

"Maybe a little watching for runners," Jack admits. "If you still want a game, I can kick your ass at snap?"

"I'd like to see that." 

"Oh, in that case, you're on," he huffs and she laughs, and even though that reaction's coming more and more often these days Jack still feels a bit proud of himself. "First round loser has to go in and make tea?"

"I believe you've got yourself a wager," Bella says, and bumps his shoulder with hers. 

 

**14.**

_"Ah, Runner Five I presume."_

_"Put him on._

_"Jack—"_

_"Put him on now. Put him on, Simon."_  

...

There's a rustle on the other end of the line. "Where are you?"

"Bed," Jack's voice is soft, slightly drowsy. "Just lying down for a second, sorry."

"No, it's fine," it must be nearly 1 a.m. Unless it's later. Eugene's back and neck and shoulders burn from sitting in his chair without a break, his eyes feel sandy and he lost the ability to hold his head up from the desk hours back. He can understand tired. "You should get some sleep. I think Three and Five want to run you back in the morning."

"Are you going to sleep too?" Jack asks, and Eugene can picture him, shifting onto his side, pillow digging into his cheek, hair already starting to form the mother of all cowlicks. It's all so clear, it feels like he should be able to slide out of his chair, into bed next to him. 

"I thought I'd stay here tonight."

"In the comm shack? That desperate to listen to me snore?"

_Yes_ , he doesn't say. And more besides. If it weren't for the leg, Eugene thinks he might run all the way to Birkmyre himself, just to watch his chest rise and fall. 

"Feel like I'm in an Aerosmith song," Jack says, not really stifling a giggle. "You know, _I could stay awake just to hear you breathing_..."

"Please don't start singing." His eyes are stinging again and he swipes at them with the back of his hand, leans forward on the desk until he can rest his forehead against a bent arm.

"In that case, am I allowed to ask what you're wearing?"

"Seriously?"

"What?" Jack's voice is exactly the opposite of innocent. 

"You're going to try to do that now?"

"I'm just trying to make the most of the opportunity here. It's not like there are a lot of chances for post-apocalyptic phone—"

"Jack."

"Not a good time?"

He laughs, and it feels — he's not sure. Amazing, and painful and only a little like sobbing.

"Gene?" he says it hesitant, careful, everything Jack's usually not. "Are you alright?"

No. Probably not. Not after the two weeks he's had, not with the miles between Birkmyre and Abel still stretched between them and a mistress of the house who thinks nothing about lying through her teeth about whether the world thinks his partner is alive or not. 

Alright is... pretty far off, still. Aspirational, at best.

"I'm better," he says, instead.

**Author's Note:**

> Dialogue at the beginning of part 14 courtesy of the eternally delightful (and at least slightly trollish) mind of Matt Wieteska, without whose creations I would certainly have a lot more free time. Thanks, jerk.


End file.
